Pork journey begins

Around 12:00pm on December 31, 2009, I received a call at the office from our division director of information technology. What kind of emergency could drive him to call me (from his vacation)? Were the dreaded Y2K+10 predictions coming true?

No. Something more pressing. He was about to buy a pig. A half a hog to be more precise. He asked if I wanted to split and take a quarter hog. The deal won't last; these things go quickly; we have to act now. Of course I said "yes". The other pork-eating member of our household, Julie, was enthusiastic when she later heard about the idea.

Several months ago, I read a pretty compelling book titled The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend. What I took away from Pollan was that all food types are problematic in one way or another and terms like 'organic' don't really mean much on their own. But, one of the best things we can do (healthwise, tastewise, environmentally, economically) is get to simply know where our food is sourced from. Julie and I stepped up our farmer's market visits and purchased a large freezer with the intent of stocking it with hogs, beeves, and whatever else we could procure from reputable sources we knew. And now we have gone to the next step...

Our 1/4 hog is originally from a farm in Canby, Oregon. Raised by a friend of a friend. It lived free range in a orchard supplementing its diet with apples and pears fallen from the trees. We should receive in the next couple weeks.

This is going to be fun.